BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

krocheav Makes me wonder why this mini classic is not better known. This marvelous tale of the Sea, not only offers very good performances by Claude Rains, Dana Andrews, and Philip Dorn, but is based on an intriguing novel "The Gaunt Woman" by Edmund Gilligan. The Screenplay receives fine treatment, with plenty of suspense by Dale Van Every (A.K.F. that other great Sea Classic: "Captains Courageous") It's the eerie look of the film thats the real star. Great, moody B/W Cinematography by George E. Diskant who gave us those fine Noir images in several other RKO features: "The Narrow Margin" - "Riffraff" - "They Live By Night" and "On Dangerous Ground". Some neat special effects also help lift the tension as it moves along.Combined with the evocative Direction of Award Winner: Alfred Werker ("He Walked by Night" - "Lost Boundaries") 'Sealed Cargo' is packed with viewing enjoyment, filled with mystic shots (in dense fog at sea) during the dangerous days of WW11. This tale will keep any not overly demanding viewer very happily occupied for its nicely paced 90mins. Pretty Carla Balenda ("Hunt the Man Down" and much on TV) supplies the female interests and carries it off with likable style. While it's set in wartime, you would not call this a 'war' film.RKO sure knew how to entertain audiences with a wide range of assorted themes throughout the 30's - 50's. Both Werker and Diskant went on to give some of the better shows of B/W Television their look and feel, creating a stylized look on small budgets. Seems 'Cargo' is rarely shown, so well worth looking for. Some TV Prints are not so good, being from old CC Movietime copies, so look for a true RKO print if you can.

Kittyman I really like Dana Andrews as an actor, and he is quite good in this movie, playing a wartime fishing captain. But what should have been a lights-out war film because of plot, pacing, and performances (with one exception) flounders instead.First, the film messes up its believability. During World War II ships ran without lights to reduce enemy detection. On clear nights, even cigarettes could be seen miles away. Yet as Captain Andrews' vessel creeps through the fog to investigate the explosions and flames up ahead (and, incidentally, why would he want to take that risk?), its lights are all ablaze. (And this incredible goof, by itself, spoils much of the movie for me.)Later Andrews finds the schooner he aided contains a hidden torpedo compartment. (In reality, the ship is a disguised u-boat tender.) But the compartment's dimensions don't work. From what we are shown, it appears nearly as large as a carrier hanger deck. And clearly that is too big to fit within the diminutive vessel of which it is supposed to be a part. Second, the film sabotages its suspense.Of Captain Andrews' two new "Danish" seaman, we are led to believe one is a good guy, the other a spy. But since a much bigger star is cast as the good guy, that decision trivializes most of the "who could be whom" suspense. Finally, Claude Rains plays the Captain of, and the only man found aboard, the rescued schooner. This too is a mistake. For his sinister demeanor (and apparent lack of "Danishness") suggests funny business from the start. Oskar Werner (Decision Before Dawn, 1951), for example, would have been a better choice. A great actor, he was baby-faced and innocent-looking to boot, both qualities which would have helped keep us guessing.

Robert J. Maxwell What a neat little picture from RKO. Not a masterpiece but an unpretentious, solid, atmospheric drama and mystery about a Nazi mother ship and its cargo during World War II.Dana Andrews is the master of the Daniel Webster, a Gloucester fisherman, like that in "The Perfect Storm." He reluctantly agrees to take along a woman, the unremarkable Carmen Balenda, and drop her off at a tiny seaport in Newfoundland, despite the threat of German submarines. On the way they run into fog and discover a Danish square-rigged schooner with all sorts of topside damage from being shot up by a sub.In a tense scene, Andrews and his small crew investigate the ship and find the only person aboard is the Captain, Claude Raines. The cargo is rum. Andrews agrees to tow the shot-up ship to the tiny seaport that he's headed for.I'll make the rest of this summary brief. With the Webster and the schooner both docked, Andrews sneaks back aboard the cargo ship, finds his Danish crewman also poking around, and they discover that the real cargo is "enough torpedoes to blow up every ship at sea." Raines is an officer in the German Navy and has notified his U-boats to put into port and resupply. An action climax resolves all the issues.It's niftily put together. Alfred Werker's direction has nothing much to recommend it but the casting is well done. Andrews is his reliable stern self. And there are two Danes in his crew, each newly hired, and each suspecting the other of being a Nazi spy. One of them certainly is. Here's an example of what I mean when I say the casting is well done. It would have been SO easy to make one of the Danes, namely the spy, less attractive in some way than the other. Get an ugly guy, or a snot nose. But, no. One has an innocent, boyish face. The other is bulkier but looks and sounds genuine and sincere. Poor Henry Rowland is required to be another German, First Mate Anderson -- as he was almost always cast -- although he's just a guy from Omaha.The dialog helps a lot. When Andrews is interrogating the two Danes, he has them speak Danish to each other. The boyish one tells Andrews, "Is not good Danish, but in Denmark are many accent, just like United States." The other remarks, "He speaks good Danish, just like learn in school." When Carmen Balenda asks her father, a Canadian Navy officer, if he thinks Claude Raines is exactly who he says he is, her father replies, "Is any man?", but nothing is made of it. It's just another of several interesting conversational exchanges. When Andrews and his crew first board the cargo ship, they find a dead body crushed by some rigging. "He's not a Danish seaman," remarks one man. "He's not a seaman of any kind," says Andrews, "Where's the weather in his face?" Further, I don't know what the background of the writer is, but the sea lingo rings true enough. "Make it fast" instead of "tie it up." An anchor is a "hook." And an "anchor watch" isn't called a "skeleton crew." The munitions hold isn't "a secret room." It's a low budget movie. The special effects are pedestrian by today's standards. But, though it's studio bound, and though a beach in Newfoundland hardly looks like the sunny California strand we see here, the set decoration is convincing enough. It LOOKS enough like an isolated fishing village nestled in a cove that you can practically smell the haddock. It all establishes a surprisingly impressive atmosphere, considering the limitations of the time.It's not a wham-bang shoot 'em up. There's very little violence outside of the explosive climax. And Andrews may be a hero but he's no saint. When Raines refuses to reveal the location of a hostage, Andrews pistol whips the unarmed man.Clichés aren't entirely avoided. There is the "forget-about-me-and-save-yourselves" module. And the musical score is straight out of a Charlie Chan mystery.But that's easily overlooked in this suspenseful and modest little piece.

bkoganbing Sealed Cargo would have been a typical war film had RKO done it in 1943 when people were willing to buy these kind of plots. By 1951 this had become clearly outdated. Howard Hughes must have been going through some old scripts and/or story ideas and came up with this one and said it would be a great film still.Dana Andrews stars in this film as Gloucester fishing boat captain whom we meet still griping because his is deemed a necessary occupation and he can't get in the fight. Still he takes his boat out for a run in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland with a special passenger in Carla Ballenda who wants to go there to meet her dad Onslow Stevens who is in the Canadian Air Force until recently invalided out. On the way Andrews spots a deserted ghost schooner ship with only her captain still on board, Claude Rains somewhat disheveled. He gives the ship a tow into the small fishing village he was to drop Ballenda off in. But the trading schooner is a disguise for the ship being the mother ship of a Nazi U-boat wolfpack. She's carrying in a secret compartment a load of torpedoes for the U-boats to reload and do their dirtiest fighting with. This film was so dated by 1951 the audience then must have been stunned. The players to their credit go at it with a straight face, especially Claude Rains who is a sinister figure among the ridiculous. Dana Andrews is a proper tightlipped hero.Sealed Cargo is a World War II propaganda exercise that someone forgot to make back then and then remembered in 1951.